Beginnings
As I write, Shimon Peres has been named head of Israel's Labor Party, the most likely prospect, therefore, for Israel's next prime minister. The media are calling Peres a hawk, as if that were an...
...A nation is not a public relations company...
...I hope that many, many of our readers will want to give moment as a gift...
...And how can we coexist with a force that doesn't accept coexistence...
...New Greece is normal, and it's boring...
...Well, happier and less insecure, anyway...
...The media are calling Peres a hawk, as if that were an adequate description of this complex man...
...But we are wrong not to look at the larger prospect...
...Such gifts make their recipients happy, and make us secure...
...Moreover] the Palestinian people themselves are deep in their hearts alarmed by the prospect that the PLO will take over their destinies...
...We would not try to liquidate a single Arab state...
...I thank those of you who've helped, and welcome those who are new to the family...
...if the Jewish People had 21 states, as the Arabs do, and the struggle would be about 6,000 square kilometers, we would make a compromise...
...Sorry...
...What we want is to create an old, ancient Israel in modern terms...
...For more on Breira, turn the pages...
...Yet what they want is that the single state which is Jewish and sovereign will stop being Jewish and sovereign...
...There was an interruption for a short time, in the wake of the Holocaust and the creation of Israel...
...You can't endanger your own life just to please public opinion...
...Some of these emerged in a moment interview with Peres last December, and I think it interesting to share them again...
...My friends in the fund-raising field tell me that they're beginning to feel some backlash, as people indicate that they're not interested in subsidizing corrupt politicians...
...Yadlin, and the others who have betrayed their office and our trust...
...the leadership goes to cocktail parties at the UN...
...Rabin, and Mr...
...On the Jews: "I do not believe that it's any longer a struggle for the existence of Israel...
...They will support the PLO until reaching independence, but from then on, it will become a hole for them...
...We are right to be angry with Mr...
...On Israel's purpose: "Compare old Greece and new Greece...
...They are not democratic because they were not elected...
...On the PLO: "They are not a democratic organization or a disciplined movement...
...But that response is clearly wrong: whatever one's assessment of Israel's achievements thus far—and mine is exceedingly positive—Israel's story is the story of the next centuries, not of the last three decades...
...And yet we managed it...
...And they don't share with their own people the hardships...
...As Shimon Peres said last December, "You can't measure history like you measure temperature, every day asking, 'What is your temperature?' You must look upon it in a larger, greater prospect...
...On the UN: "How can you explain that people who know how to read and write decide in the middle of the day that Zionism is a form of racism...
...We never had numbers...
...And whoever speaks about 'the poor PLO,' what I can say is...
...And it must judge very seriously its own alternatives...
...First of all," Peres said, "a nation must have character...
...In many ways, we are not returning to the traditional situation...
...An error in our February/March issue: We had reported that Breira had been accepted as a member of the Community Relations Committee of the New Haven Jewish Federation...
...So do, please, keep moment in mind...
...Corruption in high places is the other leading news out of Israel these days, and it is, of course, distressing news...
...We have lost so many people because they lost their heart, trying to negotiate with all the problems we've had in our history...
...And I know we can maintain the State—without which, Judaism does not have a future...
...We never had golden horizons...
...The problem with the Jewish People is that we are so sensitive, so alarmed, that from time to time we surrender before there is a real need, or any need...
...Not so...
...But the hawk-dove distinction just doesn't fit Israeli politics very well, and there are more interesting and more significant aspects to Mr...
...I think it's now a struggle for the existence of the Jewish People...
...Finally, a word of thanks and of encouragement: the last month has been by far our best this year with respect to signing on new subscribers...
...The odds were always against us...
...Peres than the ornithological appellation...
...It's a calculated risk I take, since by the time you read this, the confusions of Israeli politics being what they are, Labor may have failed in its bid to form the next government, and Peres may—though it's hardly likely— be job-hunting...
...When Bialik, decades back, proposed that he looked forward to the day when there would be in Palestine "a Jewish jail, with a Jewish guard on the outside and a Jewish prisoner on the inside," he was talking about Jewish normalcy, not about what we have lately witnessed...
...The Jewish People, all the time, throughout history, was never applauded...
...There are no organizational memberships on the Committee, and we were misled when a member of Breira, in his private capacity, was invited to join the committee...
Vol. 2 • May 1977 • No. 7
